booting from tomsrbt fails

Hi all,

When I boot tomsrtbt from an old i386, all goes ok until this
bzip2 Uncompressing Linux... aaa
after a while it ways
bzip2 Uncompressing Linux... aaab
and after another while it automatically reboots, is this due to very 
old hardware?

Is there an alternative? Linux for old i386 or something?

Thanks,

Pander